The chamber trembled, the air thickening with the weight of something unnatural. Orion's grip tightened around the Astralis Core, its shifting light casting eerie patterns across the walls. His breath came in sharp, ragged bursts, his body still reeling from whatever had just happened to him.
Across the room, the Voidbound Hunter took another step forward.
The armor that covered its body was unlike anything Orion had ever seen—black, shifting like liquid shadow, yet harder than any known metal. Its mask was expressionless, a smooth surface that wept curling tendrils of darkness into the air. It moved with impossible grace, each step disturbingly silent.
It's watching. Measuring. The thought wasn't his own, but it whispered at the edges of his mind, like the Core itself was speaking.
Lyra, standing just behind him, raised her pistol, though her hands weren't as steady as usual. "Orion," she murmured, eyes locked on the Hunter. "Tell me that thing isn't what I think it is."
"It's worse," Orion muttered.
The Voidbound didn't belong in this world. They were nightmares made real, creatures that existed between existence, hunting down things that weren't supposed to be touched. And right now, Orion had something they wanted.
The Astralis Core pulsed.
The Voidbound lunged.
It moved faster than thought, crossing the chamber in a blink. Orion barely had time to react—his body acted on instinct, Core-infused energy flooding his limbs. He twisted to the side, narrowly avoiding the blur of obsidian claws that slashed where his chest had been moments before.
The impact of the strike shattered the stone floor behind him.
Orion hit the ground hard, rolling to regain his footing. He hadn't even seen it move. His heartbeat thundered, every fiber of his being screaming that this was something he wasn't meant to fight.
Lyra fired.
The shot from her pistol rang out, the bullet flashing through the dim light—only for the Voidbound to shift, its form bending like smoke. The bullet passed through its body without resistance, striking the far wall.
No effect.
Lyra swore, adjusting her aim, but the Hunter was already moving again. It blurred forward, hand outstretched toward Orion.
The Core reacted.
Before Orion could think, his hand moved, light flaring along his fingertips. A barrier of starlit energy snapped into place just as the Voidbound struck. The impact sent shockwaves through the chamber, Orion's arms shaking with the force of it. The Voidbound hissed, recoiling slightly, its form flickering at the edges.
It didn't like that.
Orion had no idea how he had done it, but he couldn't hesitate. He pushed forward, Core-light hardening around his fist. He swung, and to his surprise, the energy lashed out—a streak of white-gold radiance colliding with the Hunter's chest.
This time, the Voidbound stumbled.
But it didn't fall.
It lifted its head slowly, the mask unreadable, but Orion could feel something behind it. A sense of recognition. Calculation.
Then it raised its own hand.
The chamber fractured.
The walls twisted, the sigils on their surface corrupting—the ancient symbols bleeding into something wrong. The very air darkened, the ground beneath Orion's feet falling away into an abyss of shifting void. A single moment stretched into eternity, gravity twisting sideways, upending reality itself.
Orion couldn't breathe.
It's warping space itself.
His body was being dragged in every direction at once, caught in the tide of the Voidbound's power. The Core pulsed in warning, but Orion could barely think—his mind fraying at the edges as the darkness closed in.
Then Lyra grabbed his wrist.
And fired directly into the Core.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then everything exploded.
The Astralis Core flared—not just light, but gravity, force, time itself twisting outward in a shockwave. The chamber snapped back into shape, the abyss shattering into countless fragments of reality. The Voidbound reeled, its form distorting violently, as if struggling to remain whole.
Orion hit the ground, gasping.
Lyra pulled him up. "Run."
He didn't argue.
They bolted.
---
The tunnels beneath the ruins stretched in endless, winding paths, carved from the bones of a civilization that had been dead for millennia. Orion didn't know where they were going, only that putting distance between them and the Voidbound took priority.
The walls pulsed with faint sigils, some reacting to the Core Orion carried. He could still feel it—alive inside him, its energy coursing through his veins. It had protected him back there. Fought back. But using it had been… wrong.
It wasn't just power. It was something else.
Lyra ran beside him, her breath quick but controlled. "You alright?" she asked without looking over.
"No," Orion admitted. His hands were still shaking. "That thing wasn't just a Voidbound. It was something worse."
Lyra's jaw tightened. "I know."
They kept moving.
Minutes passed, or maybe longer. Time felt different down here. The deeper they went, the less the world felt real—like they were moving between spaces, stepping into places that weren't meant to be walked.
Then they saw it.
The tunnel widened into a vast underground cavern. And at its heart, rising from the stone like a titan left behind from another age, was a ship.
Not just any ship.
A starcruiser.
It had been buried for centuries, but its design was unmistakable—sleek, otherworldly metal with faint, glowing veins of blue running along its hull. Half of it was embedded in the cavern wall, as if it had crashed here long ago and never been found.
Orion slowed to a stop, staring.
Lyra exhaled. "Well," she muttered. "That's unexpected."
Something about it felt important. As if it was waiting.
Orion's grip tightened on the Core.
This is where it begins.